by Adrian Levy
They would get together at four thirty P.M. outside the shrine of a popular Sufi saint on the outskirts of Mardan. The ISI took up positions, with several officers dressed up as women in burqas as they mingled with the worshippers, and waited for Abu Faraj’s red motorbike to appear.57
As the meeting time approached, Abu Faraj called. “Is everything set?” he asked nervously.
Salahuddin, who had been dragged out of his detention cell to a nearby bazaar so that Abu Faraj could hear suitable background noise, mumbled: “Everything is fine.”
But no one showed and the ISI stood its team down.
Everyone was dejected.
Early the next morning Salahuddin’s phone rang. It was Abu Faraj. “Nine thirty A.M.—same place.”
The ISI called it through. “Rendezvous is back on!”
Knowing the habits of Pakistani officials, Abu Faraj had deliberately rescheduled when most of them would still be in bed. Pulling in a skeleton team at short notice, the ISI again took up positions around the shrine, and at exactly nine thirty A.M. a red motorbike pulled up. The man sitting on the back was wearing large sunglasses and a hat, but the ISI surveillance team spied his distinctive facial markings.
As Abu Faraj walked toward the shrine, followed at a discreet distance by his gunman, burqa-wearing ISI agents closed in. One got a hand on Abu Faraj before his bodyguard pulled out an AK-47 and let rip, emptying the clip into the crowd. A second ISI agent tried to wrestle him to the ground, but Abu Faraj broke free, jumped back onto the motorbike, and tore off down the road.
After a chase and a standoff, Abu Faraj was cornered and arrested. Musharraf could barely contain himself. “Al Qaeda’s Number Three. We’ve got him,” he told General John Abizaid on May 3, 2005, when the CENTCOM commander arrived in Islamabad for a surprise visit. “Please tell President Bush—or should I?” In Washington, Bush was lavish with his praise. The capture of Abu Faraj was “a critical victory in the war on terror.” Both presidents had caught a lucky break.
Osama bin Laden, who was in Haripur, saw the report on Al Jazeera. He railed about the “dictator tyrant” Musharraf, who allowed “the FBI to frolic in his country with freedoms that they cannot even enjoy in America.” The president was a “traitor” who sought to “annihilate Pakistan” in a campaign that would “only benefit Americans, Jews and Indians.”58
In Damadola, Dr. al-Zawahiri was also apoplectic. “The enemy struck a blow against us with the arrest of Abu al-Faraj. May God break his bonds,” he wrote, complaining that “many of the lines have been cut.” How would they get funds distributed now, and their letters? He instructed the brothers “to contain the fall as much as they could.”59
The analysis of Abu Faraj’s network started immediately, with Pakistani interrogators pummeling him at a secret ISI interrogation facility in Islamabad while the CIA observed. ISI chief Kayani wanted details on the assassination attempts on Musharraf, while the Americans wanted to chart his role in terrorist operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Europe. Both sides wanted to know about Osama and Dr. al-Zawahiri. Where were they?
Abu Faraj had prepared for this moment with a fake story, saying that he had once met al-Zawahiri at the home of a tribal elder called Bakhtpur Khan, who lived in Damadola. It would take the ISI months to locate this man, but he had no connections to the jihad.
Frustrated with Abu Faraj, the CIA dispatched him to Detention Site Orange in Afghanistan, where permission was given to use Enhanced Interrogation Techniques on him.
After he had been softened up, Abu Faraj was flown to a secret CIA detention facility in Romania, becoming another ghost in the machine.
Soon after, Osama received news about two more significant losses. His friend, the fugitive red-haired strategist Abu Musab the Syrian, had sneaked back into Pakistan after several years in Iran, only to be caught by the ISI at a safe house in Quetta, along with his deputy, Abu Khalid al-Suri. Handed over to the CIA, both men were rendered to their native Syria, where they faced an uncertain fate.60 Both Abu Musab and Abu Khalid stood accused of inspiring and helping to finance the Madrid train bombings of March 2004 in which 192 people died, among many other operations.61 They disappeared into the notorious Sednaya prison complex north of Damascus, where more than fifteen thousand of Assad’s political enemies and Islamists were incarcerated, starved, beaten, or injected with life-threatening doses of medicines by prison doctors.
Summer 2005, CIA Detention Site Bright Light, Bucharest, Romania
Hassan Ghul, the trusted courier who had worked for Khalid Shaikh Mohammad and taken messages to Zarqawi, had been in U.S. custody since January 2004. After agent Nada Bakos questioned him in Iraqi Kurdistan, reporting back that he had “opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset,” the CIA had ordered that he be turned over to another team for a more thorough grilling, much as it had done with Abu Zubaydah.62
The new team recorded the same intelligence but attributed it to enhanced interrogations, leading James Pavitt, the CIA’s deputy director, to congratulate them and ignore the work done already by Bakos. “This is exactly the type of effort with a detainee that will win the war against Al Qaeda,” Pavitt wrote. “With the intelligence Station has obtained from Ghul, we will be able to do much damage to the enemy.”63
Now, Ghul was dispatched on an invisible journey that was later partially illuminated in a series of declassified government cables. According to a May 2005 Justice Department memo, a detainee named “Gul [sic]” was held for two days in Afghanistan and subjected to interrogation methods such as “attention grasp, walling, facial grasp, facial slap, wall standing, stress positions and sleep deprivation.” Afterward, he was rendered to another secret CIA detention facility in Bucharest, Romania.64
Housed in the former National Registry Office for Classified Information (known as ORNISS), an anonymous office building in the heart of a busy residential district in the capital, the site was code-named Bright Light. From the outside, the white and cream plaster building looked like just another unloved Romanian government bunker. But in the basement, the CIA jail consisted of just six cells, mounted on large iron springs to keep inmates literally off-balance.65
Ghul’s former boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, had been there since late 2003 and was a physical wreck after almost a year of enhanced interrogations that saw him waterboarded 183 times. Ghul remained relatively laid-back and cocky. “His earlier experiences with U.S. military interrogators have convinced him there are limits to the physical contact interrogators can have with him,” wrote one of his new interrogators, taking another sideswipe at Bakos.
After CIA personnel requested permission to “shift his paradigm of what he expects to happen,” Ghul was “shaved, barbered, stripped and placed in the standing position.”66 He was spared the waterboard because he was considered too fat and unhealthy to survive the experience.67 The interrogators focused on “beatings, rectal examinations and water dousing,” but did not pick up on the relationship Ghul had with Khalid or detect the notes they wrote for each other, dropped behind toilets and placed under shower mats.
When Abu Faraj joined them that summer they conspired, rehearsing what each would say, passing around letters while on toilet visits, communicating in knocks and whispers through the cell walls. Ghul had last seen Abu Faraj two years earlier when he had brought money from Saudi Arabia to Shakai. Between the three of them, they could draw a snapshot of the entire support system surrounding Osama and Dr. al-Zawahiri.
In July 2005, after two months of brutal interrogation, Abu Faraj claimed never to have heard of Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti. The following month, Khalid said he could recall a brother called “Abu Ahmad” but that he was a very junior member of Al Qaeda who had married and retired from the jihad in 2002.
Abu Faraj “swore to God” that he had never heard of Abu Ahmad, saying, “I would never forget anyone who worked for me.” He also threw a bogus name into the mix. The outfit’s key courier was Abu Abd al-Khaliq Jan, who had been his �
�go-between with bin Laden since mid-2003.”
As “the last detainee to maintain contact with [Osama],” Jan would surely be best placed to know the truth about couriers, the CIA duly reported. Had the al-Kuwaiti name been a ruse all along? They went back to Hassan Ghul. But after being tortured, he was now playing dumb.
The agency eased off. All three prisoners were assigned “homework” in their cells. This included writing up lists of contacts with their code names and phone numbers, drawing diagrams of safe houses and training camp layouts, and detailing bank accounts. They were rewarded with Snickers chocolate bars or allowed to read books, which they shared, concealing notes inside. The guards found one written by Khalid in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, instructing the others to stop talking about couriers altogether.68
July 2005, Block 100, Tehran
The Mauritanian’s wife had been watching the lights going on and off in a neighboring block for more than a month, wondering if it was some kind of interrogation center. Al Jazeera was full of stories about U.S.-operated black sites to where people they had known in Afghanistan were being rendered. Was Iran doing the same? she wondered.69
Sometimes she heard a distant call to prayer that wafted over the wall. Might it have been screaming? She wasn’t the only detainee to notice. One brother had been spying through a hole in the gate, watching as guards brought in shopping bags that were delivered to a neighboring building. One day the Mauritanian called on Dr. Jamali in the medical center and saw some documents on his desk that addressed treatment programs for prisoners in “Block 200.”
He called a shura under the fig tree. “I think our mujahideen brothers are next door,” he whispered. High walls, solid gates, barbed wire, guard towers, and a dozen cameras lay between.
Urwah al-Libi, a hothead from the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, volunteered to make contact. He waited until nine P.M., when the guards changed over, then slipped into the yard and shouted out a greeting in Arabic.
A call came back.
Excited, Urwah asked the neighbors to turn their lights on and off.
They did.
Over the next few nights, Urwah and the Mauritanian stood by the wall and called out questions, establishing that one Egyptian and two Libyan brothers were there, along with their families. They shared the same escorts and guards as those in Block 100 but their conditions were far worse. Desperate to learn more but fearing they would be overheard, they decided to wait a couple of days to see if the Iranians were watching.
When nothing was said, they resumed the dialogue by wrenching off a metal grille from a wooden gate that separated the two compounds. The Mauritanian fetched his son, who wriggled through the hole to call out questions, relaying the answers back to his father.
The three families in Block 200 had evaded capture until late 2003, they said, meaning they had much more up-to-date news about others in Iran. They were certain that Osama’s family was also imprisoned elsewhere on this base, as were the army council chief Saif al-Adel, his deputies Abu al-Khayr al-Masri and Abu Mohammed al-Masri, and several Jordanians.
Fearful for his son’s safety, the Mauritanian hauled him back by his ankles and replaced the grille.
August 2005, House No. 3, Street No. 8-A, Garga Road, Bilal Town, Abbottabad
The Kuwaiti brothers contemplated the implications of Abu Faraj’s arrest. Abrar was at the new house in Abbottabad, fixing anti-snooping film onto the windows of the upper floor. He told his brother that too much money had been spent for them to abandon the building, even though Abu Faraj could lead the authorities there if he broke under pressure.
Ibrahim, who was fatigued by three years at Osama’s side, remained worried; but the rental house in Haripur was bursting.70 Both Maryam and Bushra had new babies. The neighbors were nosy. The Sheikh was so excited about moving home, he couldn’t bear to disappoint him.
Once they were settled, Ibrahim was hoping to broach the subject of handing over the reins to a new companion. He wanted his life back. He already had an eye on his middleman in Peshawar, a Pashtun brother named Mohammed Aslam who he met once a month to exchange letters at one of the city’s covered markets.
Ibrahim and Abrar were decided. They could not afford to change the plan.
A disguised Osama and his family arrived in Abbottabad at the end of August, settling on the second floor, with Amal, Seham, and the children taking rooms on either side of the corridor, while one bedroom was set aside as the Sheikh’s “media studio.” No children or women were allowed in there.
Abrar, Bushra, Maryam, and Ibrahim lived downstairs in a self-contained apartment cut off from the rest of the house by a locked metal gate. Their entrance was at the front of the house, under the balcony, while Osama’s was to the rear. A patch of garden to the left of the house was separated from the lawn at the front by a high wall to give Osama’s family some outside space.
As everyone settled in, Osama began to regrow his beard for the first time since 2001, and he organized his work, filing hundreds of audio- and videotapes in immaculate rows, hanging his golden thobe on the back of the door, ready for his next recording.71 He spent many hours locked away, watching news from Iraq and Afghanistan on Al Jazeera or composing speeches to “my Muslim Ummah” and letters to commanders out in the “mother arena” of Waziristan. These days he had good spells and bad, sometimes confined to bed by ongoing health problems. The room was shaded by yellow flowered curtains, and on a high shelf above the door he kept his good-luck totem from the Jaji battle of 1987, the snub-nosed Kalashnikov.
Whenever he rallied, he pestered Ibrahim to find a new route out for his thoughts, tapes, and letters. Ibrahim took a risk and drove across to Peshawar to train up a new courier, Abu Faraj’s deputy, Abu Hamza Rabia. He lived in Asoray, a village close to Miram Shah, the commercial hub of North Waziristan, from where he had easy access to Dr. al-Zawahiri in Damadola and to Al Qaeda financier Sheikh Saeed, who was living in Mir Ali.
When Ibrahim received his first message back from Dr. al-Zawahiri and informed Osama that the lines were open, the Sheikh immediately began writing to everyone, and the subject matter was nearly always the same: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Saif al-Adel’s protégé dominated the news from Iraq. His videotaped beheadings of Western hostages had made him notorious. One after another they appeared on jihadist websites: Nicholas Berg, Eugene Armstrong, Jack Hensley, Kenneth Bigley. In the background was the trademark black banner of Zarqawi’s group, and in the foreground, a blindfolded prisoner pleading for life, dressed in an orange jumpsuit like those worn by prisoners rendered to Guantánamo Bay.
Osama dealt with the rising sense of disgust at Zarqawi’s behavior by asking everyone in the movement to be patient. He had distrusted Zarqawi when Saif al-Adel had introduced them in Kandahar in 1999. His tattoo scars, lack of education, and swagger were the warning signs. Five times during 2000 and 2001 Osama had called Zarqawi to Kandahar to swear bayat and every time the Jordanian had refused. He was disrespectful, rude, and narcissistic.
But during the Tora Bora battle of December 2001 and in the months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Zarqawi had proved his mettle, helping coordinate the entry into Iraq, through Iran and Syria, of hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives—mujahideen who were now dependent on him for intelligence and support. To command the respect of an ever-growing army of fighters who joined Tawhid al-Jihad, Zarqawi demanded more support from Al Qaeda.
In the letter found on courier Hassan Ghul in January 2004, Zarqawi had requested a formal merger, promising: “We will be your readied soldiers, working under your banner, complying with your orders, and indeed swearing fealty to you publicly and in the news media.”72
Unable to respond directly, Osama had asked Dr. al-Zawahiri to post a reply on an Islamic website, announcing that such a merger would take place. Afterward, Zarqawi wrote Osama back, pledging loyalty: “By Allah, O sheikh of the mujahideen, if you bade us plunge into the ocean, we would
follow you … For what a fine commander of the armies of Islam you are, facing down the inveterate infidels and apostates!”73
Three months later, Al Jazeera broadcast an audiotape in which Osama reciprocated, describing Zarqawi as “the prince of Al Qaeda in Iraq” and asking “all our organization brethren to listen to him and obey him in his good deeds.” Buoyed, Zarqawi began talking about himself as the “Emir of Al Qaeda’s Operations in the Land of Mesopotamia.” With Osama’s endorsement and Al Qaeda cash, he felt invincible.
In February 2005, Zarqawi condemned the Iraqi elections as an “American game” and claimed responsibility for a series of horrifying suicide attacks, including the detonation of a massive car bomb at Hillah that wiped out 125 police recruits. He confirmed his men had kidnapped Riyadh Katei Aliwi, a colonel in the interior ministry; and the following month he was sentenced in absentia by a Jordanian court for blowing up its embassy in Baghdad in 2003. In April 2005, his men launched a rocket and mortar attack on Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison and tried to assassinate the Iraqi prime minister. In May, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia prayed for Zarqawi’s recovery after he was injured in fighting. The hard man sent an audiotape to Osama reassuring him that he would pull through.
Summer 2005, Amman, Jordan
Not everyone was pleased with Zarqawi.
Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, once his spiritual mentor, a man who was widely respected as a leading light in the world of jihad theory and whose writings were cited by Osama bin Laden, was furious with his former pupil.74
The straggly bearded Palestinian-born Salafist, who lived in Zarqawi’s home town of Zarqa but was then jailed on charges of inciting terrorism, wrote to him in blunt terms, a message smuggled out of prison and posted on a jihad website: “The pure hands of jihad fighters must not be stained by shedding inviolable blood. There is no point in vengeful acts that terrify people [and] provoke the entire world against mujahideen.”
These were strong words from someone widely recognized as the intellectual godfather of Al Qaeda.